Monday, 27 May 2013

While my king character is progressing through sculpting stages, I decided on take a whole new challenge, a big one this time. I finally started to participate on a competition at the Poly count community forum. Intimidating!!

The brief for the contest consist in design and model a character, then take it onto Mixamo auto-rig software and use a preset animation.

The Brief: In the early 19th century a mysterious book, the Voynich Manuscript,
made its world debut. Written in an unknown language the secrets within
are still debated to this day. Every generation has had its adventurers
take hints from the Manuscript’s broken ciphers and cryptic images. From
the high mountains of the Himalayas, to the lost jungles of the Amazon,
from cities of gold, to buried underworlds, those brave enough to call
themselves adventurers must be ready for the challenges the book alludes
to. Help us discover the great adventures of the past century and the
world’s most mysterious book.

YOUR MISSION:

Starting from the beginning of the 19th century up to modern day, create
an adventurer to seek out the treasure of the Voynich Manuscript. Will
it be a 19th century scholar from England, or perhaps a German code
breaker from World War One? A Chinese medicine man or a hired thug for
the Railroad barons of the expanding United States? Will it be a modern
day billionaire, searching for thrills, or the descendant of Voynich
himself? Use the greatest adventure stories you can think of as your
inspiration and create your ideal hero!

Source: Polycount Forum

Being comedic on my character designs, I decided to add a twist my version of the adventurer and I came up with this.

Character: Horace Bennett

Age 59

Setting: 19th Century, London England.

"Horace Bennett , an Englishman enlighten by the discipline of the
plants, is a renowned name in the botanical world, primarily due to his
discoveries of new species of plants.
Being very intellectual, when he heard of the the “Voynich Manuscript“,
he automatically knew it hid information about his beloved plants,
maybe a healing plant, maybe a poisonous one or maybe a very rare
species.
After many sleepless nights attempting to decipher the manuscript as he
expected, it provided him with information about a very rare species of
plant only to be found at the very center of the amazon Jungle, South
America.
Being a botanist and not an adventurer, he thought to hire a
expedition, however as the thought was formed it was immediately discarded,
after realising the lack of coin on his pockets, all spent on whiskey
which served as a company horrendous nights being puzzled by the
manuscript.
Now his only choice was to grab his botanical kit, disembark in Brazil
and venture alone to the heart of the dangerous Amazon Jungle in search
of this rare species of plants, which could make him some serious gold."

Friday, 24 May 2013

I am surprised in a positive, The program has a clean layout, with the essentials tools, the brushes are used in a more traditional way, and often tricky. It has a lot of little tools that help your workflow, Such as tracing or reference tabs, where you can stick on your painting something to refer to. The menus are neat and user-friendly, but not as vast and detailed as photoshop. I am impressed with the program which I will be using from now on.

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

I am just posting some progress on my Glutton King Sculpture, where I am finishing the 1st pass detailing. As you may see from my original sketch, I have modified the Belly area. with this modification I intend to emphasize his character.

Lastly, As some have noticed my profile picture changed again, this time I tweaked my caricature.

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

I just wanted to quickly update, my blog with some more work I have been working on.

Firstly, I decided to get the Beautician Character sculpted, so here I share few renders on the bust ( the body still needs rendering). I have used Zbrush for rendering purposes, as I have been looking into it.

Meanwhile I have been working a King's Portrait, in which apart from the drapery I want to use as a background. It is pretty much there.

and finally I would like to share to you how the model for the king is going.

About Me

Ruben Martins is a freelance character artist from Portugal, who graduated from CG Arts and Animation Course at UCA Rochester, UK.
Ruben grew up watching animations by Disney and at his heart he stayed that child appreciating the skill of making drawings come alive. In his projects, he is passionate about designing and giving life and personality to characters. Ruben is an enthusiastic individual with great attention to detail, who seeks adventures and challenges. In his spare time he likes to travel and explore different cultures and cuisines.